A little background: Dd is 9 and in 3rd grade in DoDDS. In 1st grade her teacher requested she be evaluated for ADD/ADHD. After a battle over who was supposed to take the first step (school or ped. behavioral med) which finally ended with dh ordering the one he was standing in front of to call the other. Dd was eventually evaluated and diagnosed by PBM as having ADHD and refered to ped neurology for additional evals. The school started their testing shortly after dd began taking 5 mg of ritalin 3x a day. After the school did their testing but before the meeting with me dd was diagnosed with a seizure disorder and put on meds for that. (by this time dd was no longer being followed by PBM). I informed the school that dd had be diagnosed with the seizures — looking back I wonder why that new diagnosis didn’t restart the evaluation process or alter the evaluation results. Anyway, this occurred at the end of 2nd grade (May 2000). The school determined her to be ineligible for any services/assistance because her test results were in the “average” range on the WJACH tests and on the WISC-III her nonverbal reasoning skills were 99% and verbal skills were 50%. The general inpression I got from the school was that until dd is failing school they won’t help her.
We were refered back to PBM by the ped. in April 2001. The dr (I forget what his title is — ped psycologist I think) questioned me regarding what services dd receives from school. I think he was a bit disappointed/frustrated for us that the school has not given dd any help. He wrote a note saying he wants the school to re-evaluate dd to determine the impact of the ADHD and seizure disorder on her acedemics, social skills, and emotions. The schools reaction (new csc staff this year) was “her test scores from last year were fine, so what do you want now?” I told the csc person that yeah, her test scores may be fine but we’re having to spend 4-5 hours per night working with her (not on homework — her teacher doesn’t believe in homework — go figure) re-reading social studies lessons, drilling math facts and discussing math concepts, drilling spelling words etc just to help her keep up with her class. (all this from a kid that was reading, writing(at 3 yo)/spelling, adding/subtracting BEFORE starting kindergarten). The school is also telling me that since there are only 3-4 weeks left in this school year it’ll be sometime next year before they will get around to evaluating her/giving her any help.
I should also mention that when she started on both medications (ritalin in Oct 99 and Tegretal in Apr 00) we requested feedback from her 2nd grade teacher and even with giving her teacher eval forms to fill out we received not a single word of feedback. This year it’s taken 3-4 attempts to get feedback from the teachers and then the feedback was contradictory (she’s never fidgety on one page and always fidgety on the next — by same person) and the only feedback we get is the eval forms from the drs. The teacher waited until report card time to tell us dd wasn’t completing assignments even though we’d requested she let us know right away.
Dh’s attitude is that since I’m the one home I should be the one dealing with it ALL. I am fast approaching the overwhelmed/frustrated point. Any suggestions, ideas, support would be greatly appreciated. I don’t even know what I should be doing/telling the school at this point
Thank you
need support
Dear Lisa,
Its amazing how much time and energy this takes, isn’t it? It must be why I recently saw an “enough is enough” post on one of the boards. My son’s problems began about four years ago and have yet to be dealt with by the school. His tests scores are average and he manages to remain academically on par but every teacher has insisted that something is amis. His teacher this year is convinced the special ed department is just holding out on him. We paid for a private neuropsych evaluation. The result? She recommended an auditory evaluation and a OT eval. Another six month wait. Meanwhile, another year is going by.
We’ve decided to nip it all in the bud by bringing him home. Home learning is not the right choice for everyone it just happened to be a good fit for us and we are excited to take the pressure off of him and get started. I thought I’d mention it as it sounded like you were already doing it any way. It would just give your daughter a little more time in her day to be a kid.
Good luck to you and your family. Take heart, your daughter is no doubt a great kid and she obviously is blessed with devoted parents. That must be half the battle!
Re: need support(long)
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update
A relief to me anyway. The CSC coordinator e-mailed me today saying that the team agrees that dd needs help with social skills, organization and acedemics, and they feel that the information they already have (from testing her last year) is enough. They just need me to bring in a statement from the physician or copies from her medical records proving that she has been diagnosed ADHD and with a seizure disorder so they can use those to qualify her. I’m just waiting for final confirmation on the meeting date (tent. scheduled for 11 June).
I even got feedback from dd’s teacher yesterday when I asked her how things have been going the past few weeks. (She hasn’t noticed any difference in dd since they drastically increased her ritalin dose (in other words restarted her on it)). Now before I go back to the dr with that info, I plan to ask the principal to move her to a different class to see if the environment change helps any — current teacher doesn’t supervise the kids during seatwork enough to keep neighboring children from pestering dd. I feel this would help with classroom placement for next year.
Thanks.
Lisa
First off, if her ADHD is affecting school, she should be able to qualify for sped.because if not for your extra efforts, she would be failing.(I’m guessing so anyway).I have further info at the end of this post about qualifying. At the very least she should be able to get some accommodations from the classroom teacher with her classwork. Ask for a csc meeting to discuss whether sped or a 504 would be appropriate for getting your daughter accommodations. They also have an informal student service paper they can implement.
I have found that the woman at the EFMP office at ACS was extremely helpful and was willing to come to the meetings with me if I felt I needed her. Give your EFMP office a call and see what they can offer you.
Also you might look at the list of accommodations that could be helpful on this website. Some I can mention, are reduced spelling words( 10 instead of 20), reduced number of math problems( odds or evens), extra time on tests and classwork.Also I can’t see any reason why they can’t do evals in the summer or have csc meetings in the summer(except half the staff is sightseeing or going home to the states to visit maybe).
I will admit that although I got the Army regs for sped of dependent kids, it was very confusing language wise. Dodds is not funded by the dept of ed. so they are under different rules. I couldn’t find a timeline anywhere for when evals and meetings and ieps were supposed to happen like there was in VA. I did find it online on the Dodds website.
I have 2 kids in DODDS, one elementary the other middle school. Both on ritalin. I have had a rollercoaster year with my middle schooler this past year. We came to this school with an iep that we had worked our butts off to get and were told that there was insufficient evidence in our paperwork for Dodds eligibilty so he was retested. Found to be average in everything but still elegible because of the ADHD. So they have him in reg. classes with support (teacher says she waits for him to ask as he is very sensitive to being singled out) . Every 9 weeks except this past one he is doing poorly at the 4th week and I panic, go into school, find out all is ok after all and his grades have been a’s b’s and c’s this whole year and has made b honor roll twice.
My best advice to you is to just stay on the teachers, if they won’t respond to a school to home note system( works for us but I still go in on Fridays to check up) then go to school everyday to pick up your child and talk to the teacher. Ask questions and let her know you want to help her to help your child. If you show up enough, the teacher will hopefully start paying more attention. I have noticed this to be true of both public school and Dodds. The more visible I was in the school, the better my sons have done in school.
About who is responsible for the adhd dx, it is a medical condition and has to be dxed by a doc. Since we are military, that would be through our mtf. My son’s were dxed by a dev. ped at Ft. Bliss(first child) and a ped. at Langley AF hospital(2nd child). As far as the other testing for the ld’s, I’ll be honest I wasn’t too impressed. In VA, my oldest was given 8 different tests and was pretty comprehensive, given by psychs and educational specialists. Here at Dodds, he was given one test (the Kaufman) by the sp.ed teacher. The first round of tests gave a lot of info., the Dodds testing was kind of vague I thought and basically said he was average (it ranged from low to broad) with a ‘difference in his proccessing ability’. The summary was he had a learning difference not deficits. Not much help I didn’t think. However, he is doing well here and has had some exceptional teachers(a couple not so exceptional).I feel as long as he is happy and doing well, then I won’t worry about what the tests say. He will be due a triennial review when he gets to high school and we will be back in the states so we’ll see what happens.
By the way, my son qualified automatically under category A for Dodds for physical impairment because of the ADHD. It was for other health impaired which is what my son qualified under for sped in VA.Look on your ‘case study committee eligibility report’, they should be able to say yes to all three questions.I would think the addition of a seizure disorder would absolutely qualify her under this heading. The next thing is to figure out what you think would be the best help for her, accommodations, support in the classroom or self-contained class(can be for specific subjects like language arts and math the rest of the day spent with reg. class).
I realize this is very long I just hope I have been able to help some. I look at this bb every couple of days so let me know how things go.I know it makes you feel like you are the only one dealing with all this stuff, especially when you are not in the states,and dh’s think mom should ‘handle it’. Been there, still doin’ it! I am pretty sure that others on this bb will have some good advice for you as well. Lots of folks here are very knowledgeable and caring. Best wishes to you and your family.